This began as a mid-life crisis rant, and became a mid-life crisis. As I typed, I realized I wasn't pushing thoughts out through my hands, they were moving by themselves as if pulled. Some of this stuff has been in my head for a long while.

It's probably boring as hell for everyone but me. Or not; maybe I'm describing you, I don't know. I've been talking with you all for 8 years, and I couldn't tell you anyone's favorite color, and that is goddamned tragic, and it's my fault.______________________________

MMO's with graphics came into existence when I was 21. I would probably have played Genesis or other non-graphical MUDs, but by the time I had the independence and the financial means to actually maintain a persistent Internet connection, Everquest was coming out. EQ consumed my friend Marty -- we couldn't hang out because he was busy playing. I concluded that in order to continue having the social life I wanted, I'd have to come find him in the game, so I bought a copy.

I must have burned 30 hours a week on that thing, but my play-style was not one that was ever going to get me into the end of the game; I just wasn't ambitious enough to really push for the optimized gear that would tell guild recruiters that I was a good bet for their next push. I preferred to join Solidaire, and Second Covenant, and satisfy what ambitions I had while surrounded by people whose company I actually enjoyed.

It's a two-way street, of course; the expectation when you pick out a guild for social reasons is that you're going to be sociable. I think I was, for the most part, but I was 22-25 -- which meant I was also kind of a complete cock. I wasn't one of the worst -- in fact, celebrity escaped me almost entirely -- but once entrusted with officer authority, I proceeded to learn through trial and error the folly of fearing the loss of something enough to ruin having it, and of the consequences of using power without control. The whole thing crystallized when I tripped out during an argument about recruitment, and misused an officer role to deny a guild member his right to vote, or even argue his case. In the ensuing disaster, I ended up leaving the guild, then coming back as a regular member, and then kind of going away again, but the game wasn't the same anymore. I'd lost the guildmaster's respect, but all my friends were in that guild, and everyone here understands what glorious fun it is to solo in Everquest. Somewhere in that madness, I played host to a really cute, devilishly manipulative minx named Audrey, whose pictures you might have seen. When I'd had enough of providing free room and board, I suggested that this had gone on long enough, and she logged on to see if a message board could get a guy arrested. (It can, but not this guy.)

Then I got a real job, and didn't have time anyway, and so I parked Tranthas Stormwalker in the Plane of Growth at Tunare's feet and walked away from the keyboard. I came away from Everquest with the conviction firmly in mind that I cannot get along with people I can't talk to in real life. This was reinforced by the fact that I got along fine with the folks I spoke to on the phone regularly between raid fights (Taynea).

WoW came out, I whipped up a Night Elf and played with RL friends. Built-in groups, right? I mean, I live next door to some of these folks. It's not like it'd be hard to schedule stuff. I decided that I'd see what the high end is like on this one, invest a little more mechanics research and not side with Skyshrine, so to speak.

I'm pretty good at complicated math; I should have figured out that the odds that the people in my immediate vicinity were going to want to play this game like I played it were not great. Exactly one guy was more hardcore than me, and I wound up in a guild of complete strangers the moment I was ready for raids anyway. Again, good folks, but with a more pointed progression agenda, somewhat more drama, less qualified leadership and less overall courtesy.

The guild leader had not gone through the same lessons about paranoia, and when I accidentally demonstrated leadership potential on raids, I wound up running them while the guildmaster did more administrative things. What that really meant was that he was losing interest in the game and didn't want to invest the energy a raid leader has to put out, and I was happy to take the weight because nothing assures me a plan will work quite like the ability to get everyone to carry it out my way.

Then the guild leader regained some interest, and checked back in just far enough to realize he'd lost positive political control of his organization. He reacted by orchestrating a merger with a larger guild that left him an officer (and me a regular member) in the new one, then bad-mouthing me in the O-channel to the new leadership. My best friend at the time was a rogue named Draesek, played by a guy in California, and he saw what was happening as well -- so we found my RL friends again, figured out which ones were in raid guilds, picked one and jumped servers in the middle of the BC expansion.

Without a RL friend to introduce us, we would never have found another reasonably high-level guild. The game had passed a lifecycle threshold beyond which it's effectively impossible to create a raid guild unless you're standing over the corpse of an existing one with an address book in one hand and a cell phone in the other. Everyone worth recruiting is already up ahead of you, and everyone who's left will never be able to get you within reach of them. But we had an in, so we found ourselves back in the game about a tier behind where we'd been. They loved getting competent heavily-geared damage classes, and goddammit, I opened my mouth on a raid and wound up leading the damn things again.

I hadn't listened to myself enough at the time to realize that I was already beginning to get tired of the whole raid leader thing, see.

Courtesy waned in the face of technical mistakes on the part of really sensitive people who take criticism very personally. Let's face it, these folks don't actually have to log in to get through life; they're here because they choose to be, and I'm pretty lucky at this point to have a team to direct at all, let alone the reasonably successful one I had. But I wanted Illidan's head on a pike, and I didn't really believe we'd ever get there, so I set my sights on Vashj and told myself to be content with that for now.

We never got to Vashj. At the threshold of Tier 5, I spun off a splinter guild and took 12 raiders with me -- no wait, 9 of them balked at the last minute, so I'd just left without even enough new members to sign the charter. The resulting guild lasted until a RL dispute with Draesek that sent him back to my old guild full of the kind of stories that keep the guild leader from taking you both back.

Then WotLK came out, and I didn't need a guild for a while. I ran Niali to 80, and then joined random Naxxramas groups until a guild noticed me. *sigh* I was their raid leader two weeks later, and about a month after Dalaran became a thing I was trying to direct a Thaddius fight and reflecting that it was no longer possible to get 25 people together who wouldn't blow each other up while fighting Thaddius. I think Niali is still in Naxx; I never logged back in.

Okay, I'm not endgame material. I stepped away. Oh, but the next one had its hooks in me before it had ever existed. Someone made a Lord of the Rings game.

In 1985, my grandfather created a monster. He bought us kids (4 of us, 3 boys) a cassette-tape copy of the BBC Radio productions of The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. We played them to destruction, and in 1993 an unusually thoughtful girlfriend bought my brother another cassette-tape copy. I have the broken originals, but the copy is gone because we played it to destruction and it wasn't our first one. Then in a B. Dalton's in Seattle, I found out someone released it on CD, and about half an hour later I had the whole thing in MP3 format on a thumb drive. In that time, I probably went through two copies of each of the books, including the Silmarillion.

Don't play LOTR trivia games with me. If you must engage, for God's sake don't let me team up with my brother.

So LOTRO would be awesome if it was done right. And it was! It totally was. I loved that game. I'm not still playing it, because I got in a 30+ guild called Evenstar, and my fiancee is in her 20s and couldn't join, and being a terrible human being (I knew she was going to lose interest in the game soon) I did not make the show of solidarity that I should have and walk right back out. Then Moria happened to me. In LOTRO, the solo experience is wonderful while you're leveling up to catch your guildmates right up until Moria happens to you. Then you can't use your mobility advantage, because everything is hallways and cliffs, which is slow death for a soloing Ranger. Unable to find guildmates of similar level to band together through Moria, I logged a Niali out forever a second time.

Then when Rift came out, it looked really good -- so I found the server Lanys was on, leveled up in that guild, but no one was really organizing it; its creators had moved on, so it already had Solidaire Syndrome, a fatal condition in which leadership logs in so rarely that it's functionally impossible to appoint new officers, so the first complicating condition kills the guild. So I hit dungeons and maxed out DT2 gear until I found a raid guild.

Hrm. I found Impaired Judgement, which really brought things around full circle. IJ prioritized progression over all else, and they did not suck at what they do. We were in Hammerknell the night it launched, and were farming the first few bosses almost immediately. Draped in eldritch relics of deep, thrumming power, Tranthas the Rift Rogue was finally an endgame character.

I hated these assholes. Maybe three redeemable souls in the whole thing. I never said it, because the gear would have stopped coming, but I wasn't really having any fun either.

My lease ran out in RL, and we didn't want to stay where we were, so I was offline for 2 weeks moving -- and I didn't log back in. I sat down at the computer, realized that reaching for the mouse was poking whatever part of your brain is the opposite of the reward mechanism, and fired up Minecraft.

_______________________________________

So there's always one person each game is about, now that I look at it.

- Solidaire: Taenia, the initial reason for playing EQ at all.- Solidaire after SA/EK/FL/CQ formed: Kragar, who I still talk to regularly.- Second Covenant: Taynea. She's kind of a hermit, but I still hear from her.- WoW: Draesek, on 2 servers. We split over a girl, if you can imagine what that was like.- LOTRO: Brought my own -- Chelsea, who I'm gonna marry next July. - Rift: ...No one, really. That might be why I only played it for a few months.

I think maybe I don't know how to play MMO's. I always feel like I'm doing it wrong. I'm pushing 35 and still playing them off and on (off at the moment), but... well, I started Everquest to play with Taenia, and never caught up with him. I started WoW to play with my friends, who didn't keep up. I started Rift just to play again, and found out it sucks to play a game without your friends, even if you're doing it right by your peers' standards. It seems that the company you choose to keep in these things, and the company you choose to be, completely define the experience.

Good read. I don't think you "don't know how to play" the games. You seem to have a better grasp on what they mean/meant to you than most. I think a good way to tell that is the fact that you didn't have the same agenda in each game you played (GET TO THE END GAME AT ALL COSTS GO GO GO DO IT FUCK YOU IF YOU GET IN MY WAY).

MMORPGs, and gaming in general, have evolved just like we have evolved.

Im hoping starwars gets me more into MMOs than i have been. Rift was great at first but it ended up being nothing but assholes on the server where i played. I go back and forth between eq and LOTRO now. Just got out of Moria last night, that place almost killed my interest again.

I had joined a guild of hardcore raider in a pre-launch guild for SWTOR but after reading the boards the last few months and seeing them over recruit tons of idiot mouthbreathers and deny solid looking apps because they wouldn't share their RL pics on their apps....(yeah why do you need to know what they look like in real life) i gave up on them and joined a moderate raid guild.

I started playing EQ when two other guys on my team at work were playing. This was around 2001 and we had a great time leveling doing quests and enjoying the game. Then somewhere along the way I got introduced to raids. I sort of led a miserable one in he City of Mist (if I remember correctly Cak was on that raid). We didn't get what we needed then but when a follow up raid got my Jade Reaver I was hooked on doing things that required more than one party.

My evening runs with my co-workers became fewer and fewer as I was gearing up to do more raid stuff. Killing dragons was such a rush back then. Almost a high that became addictive. I was in my 30's playing a video game when I should have been a better husband and father. At least I was playing after the kids went to bed.

I was never in the best of the server raid guilds, but I had a few in-game friends that were in those guilds. I learned from them and I learned from others. I had many positions of so called responsibility in guilds across the server. Then EQ started to die. The people that I was raiding with one week were no longer in the game the next. WoW beta and EQ2 were siphoning many of our best people away. My job was coming to a close and I knew that there would be many dramatic changes soon. Gates of Discord to me was not that popular and with the changes planned for Dragons of Norrath I knew I was DONe. My last night playing EQ I hooked up with some old in-game friends and we did a walkout. Me taking Ghaani back to "pay respects to Tunare then back to Kelethlin to show Maesyn Trueshot that I had achieved a good deal as a Ranger.

After I moved to the Dallas Metroplex and starting my new job I took some of the gift cards I rec'd for my birthday to purchase WoW. This was in early 2005. I was a noob again. I was running around a new world learning things and enjoying playing the game. I was not logging in each night on a schedule to raid. I'd log in when I could, play when I wanted and then log out when I was tired. I made new in-game friends and hooked up with some old friends that had moved over from EQ. Once we started getting in the area where raids where what to do next, well we moved there. The raiding bug hit me again. Like the last time, it wasn't the loot that made it sweet, it was the kill. Taking out a boss that we had not killed before was such a rush. Ony and Molten Core to start, then Blackwing Lair, more more more I had to get it done. I took a path that left my in-game friends behind. They had much more respect for their real lives that they couldn't spend the time I was pushing the raid so we drifted apart. Dejah I am sorry that we drifted apart. I owed our friendship more than what I gave it.

Anyhow, the guild that I was in that was pushing content disbanded shortly after killing Nefarian. I went back to a guild that was moving up and when that guild had a nasty implosion I was fed up. I rolled a new toon on a new server. When transfers finally opened up I moved my old toons over. For a while things were good. I still was never in the top raid guild on the server but we were not far behind. We had a good community and enjoyed doing things together. Then after several splits, mergers and reformations I ended up in a top server raid guild. Yes the server was behind nearly ever other server, but we were completing things for the first time on that server and it was cool. I was the main pally tank for the guild and it was cool to be on the front lines. We cleared all of Black Temple and Hyjal before anyone else on the server. The roar over vent when Illidan died was amazing. We had been pressing hard to get it done and we did it. But we had been pushing towards that one goal and didn't really care about Sunwell as we knew that Wrath was soon to be released. We didn't press too far in there and started losing a lot of people that summer. The guild stayed together and we pressed hard through the leveling of Wrath, were among the firsts to get into the new Naxx and have it cleared. After pressing in Uludar something changed. I was no longer in the top group anymore. I kept losing my spot in raids even though my production was more than respectable. After getting passed for one too many raid spots I finally left them and tried to move into a more casual play style. At that time, it didn't suit me. I had been addicted to raiding and pushing the edge. (at least it was the edge for me and the people around me). After more dumbing down was done to the things that we had already finished (when I was in the raiding guild) I didn't see them as accomplishments anymore. I finally gave my account to a co-worker so she could transfer my toons to her accounts. This was well before Cata.

At that time I thought I was done with MMO's. My relationship with my wife and family got better (my wife is a saint for putting up with my bull shit). I would play some idiotic Facebook games to help with the cravings to play something, but it was no where near the same.

Finally around July, I tried Rift. Damnit. It sucked me in again. I tried to keep my playing very low keyed. I didn't care about progression, min/max, or whatever, I was just having fun. Well throw that out the window as I am in a guild that just did our first Drowned Hall run this week. Killing the bosses was fun, but not near the rush that I got before. We are really low keyed to our raiding as we do just two nights a week. None of us in the guild have done the Rift raid stuff before so we are all gearing up and learning together. I do like this guild as we all do stuff together. on most any night there will be at least one group doing T2's and we swap in and out people through out the night. I hope that I can keep my addiction in check, but I am having some fun now. Is it near the fun that I was having in EQ and when I was doing the top stuff in WoW? Honestly no, but it isn't as stressful either.

Sorry for rambling on your thread, but once I started I couldn't stop. I guess my message is that you aren't alone in the path you took. We might not have taken it together, but we took a similar journey.

I'm trying to do the MMO thing as casually as humanly possible right now.

My real life suffered terribly because of my addiction to EQ. I'll never blame it on the game -- I did choose to play it, but man... it really was like a drug in some ways for me.

All I'm doing is leveling my alt army in WoW (and taking over the market...), occasionally farming a wormhole in eve, and dicking around in LOTRO for 20-30 minutes at a time.

I hear you on this Vana. I got into UO at 21, EQ a bit later..etc. We all know what kind of hours EQ required and how many of those were spent sitting red-eyed in front of a monitor. I'd constantly turn down nights out with friends and end up staying awake all night long and be lucky if I got up with enough time to eat before heading to work. I don't blame the game, like you said I made the choice to play, I blame the lifestyle I led during those years for a lot of the social awkwardness I walk around with today =/

I started playing EQ when two other guys on my team at work were playing. This was around 2001 and we had a great time leveling doing quests and enjoying the game. Then somewhere along the way I got introduced to raids. I sort of led a miserable one in he City of Mist (if I remember correctly Cak was on that raid). We didn't get what we needed then but when a follow up raid got my Jade Reaver I was hooked on doing things that required more than one party.

I remember that raid, I was somewhat under leveled if i remember and it was a mess of fun. Didn't it take about 5+ hours due to the many deaths? haha.

I started EQ back in June of 2001, at this time my ex-boyfriend who played as well (Evica, Scion, Sulous) when the game first came out, at this time I was just playing casually trying to level up so i could play with the ex. I have only played Cakvala the Enchanter I spent about 30+ hours a week playing. The ex lost interest and I started dabbling in to the Hardcore part of the game when Shadows of Luclin was out and Planes of power was on the Horizon. Sigil, after beating the end game for PoP I ended up leaving the game for about a year than came back again and again since 2001.

The game really can re-suck you in each time, I just recently stopped playing again but spent a good 5 month stink leveling and gearing up. I never felt that way when I tried World of Warcraft just was not the same.

Even now I have not cancelled the subscription on Cakvala's account he sits in the now Guild Lobby awaiting my return which probably will happen!

Being 29 now and still play games, my new boyfriend who is now Husband thinks i'm crazy and does not care for the time I can spend playing computer games. But he was raised without computers in his childhood and I had access to a computer at the age of 11. Our age difference is only six years but the curve seems to be larger when it comes to computers.

Like many of us EQ was our first MMO. At the time I was playing M:TG with some real life friends at a coffee house. And one of them was playing EQ at one of the computers there. It looked pretty cool and I decided to give it a try. This was back in June of 2001 and until May of 2007 that's pretty much all I played except for a few excursions to CoH and a few other MMO's. Back in July of 2009 a buddy of mine finally convinced me to try WoW out and we played for a bit together. But the guild we were in imploded due to lack of leadership. So I moved to Skywall and joined Second Covenant raided with them for awhile but was getting burned out quickly. Finally one night in ICC on a 25 man one of the other DK's was complaining about my DPS being low all the time. About the same time Taynea was talking about Eve Online and sent me a 3 week trial invite. Instead of living in hisec until I had enough skill points to join a null sec corporation. I went with option two and joined a Goon Corporation named The Greater Goon and eventually ended up in Goonwaffe. Now I'm suffering from burnout again and started playing World of Tanks.

I think that we're all the same age here....I started UO when I was 22. I think that I bought over 50 RPG type games from 1996 to 1999. I played everything that came out in those four years. In the year of 1999 though, I bought only one game and played that game hard core up to like 2005ish. Everquest.

I'm 37 and also going through a mini-mid-life crisis. I bought that old Mustang in my sig 5 years ago, after one of my few combat tours to Iraq, to assist me in getting away from computer gaming. For the most part it helped.

The re-occuring theme of this message board is the fact that we all experienced our best gaming time during the "Lanys Era". I miss the hell out of Mithril Web and all of the great people that contributed to the little bright green scrolling guild chat that I would read and write in every night after work. Who leveled, who was rolling an alt, who recently completed thier epic, that what we cared about...In a way it's kind of depressing to think that no other game will ever match up to that. I won't make as many friends, real friends, in any other game. I even learned how to type on EQ. It used to take me so long just to type in HELLO.

I came back to EQ this past Feb, and I played in the best guild on the Vulak server, I was the number 1 SK when Kunark was unlocked but it just wasn't the same. Everyone, (me included) used macroquest with warps, map hacks, pp dupes etc. We pushed all of the "legit" people off the server, everyone would warp straight to something the very second it pop'd and would kill it instantly. I boxed up to 12 characters on 3 computers (with macro quest) during the summer on Vulak. I only had 7 accounts but we all played each others accounts in order to "stay ahead" of the other guilds. I was running one enchanter program that would automatically summon a pet, buff the party by class specific buffs, single and AE target mez, DD nuke etc. I could run a 6-12 characters and all that I had to do was pull mobs, the macros would do the rest. I really got out of control with it I guess.

I was never one for many friends to come over my house, I don't watch TV, so EQ for me fit right into my lifestyle. I made so many friends on Lanys. We were so close. I participated on EQ main, class and guild message boards. And we all knew each others personal life for the most part. We cared about each other, we helped out in game, it was a great time. There were great people, there were jerks and there were some that I, personally, was in awe over...especially when certain players would AFK in the EC tunnel so that they could show off their newest lewt gears. There were those people that would stay level 40 for ever. Man those were some good times. So much of our life went by in those years, spent infront of a computer....wtf...

Mid life crisis...yeah. Great post, I feel for the most part the same. I've been in a gaming slump for the past few months. I told someone at my work that the answer to a mid-life-crisis was to buy an old muscle car or a new sports car. /shrug

There's some interesting stuff coming on the horizon, work-wise. I might buy that sportscar sooner than I thought.

Meanwhile: City of Heroes! I forgot a game. I played a Tech/Ice Blaster to level 35, named (long story) "The Big Hurkin' Hat". Black dude, black cargo pants and nice sweater, combat boots, glowing red eyes, blue Lennon shades, long white hair, enormous duster hat. Flight powers. I looked like Bishop with a follicle disorder and a meth problem. At 35, I realized that it had become impossible to solo. My girlfriend played with me when she could, but she made heavy use of the sidekick system. We broke up and I kind of lost my appetite for the game.

I think maybe I don't know how to play MMO's. I always feel like I'm doing it wrong. I'm pushing 35 and still playing them off and on (off at the moment), but... well, I started Everquest to play with Taenia, and never caught up with him. I started WoW to play with my friends, who didn't keep up. I started Rift just to play again, and found out it sucks to play a game without your friends, even if you're doing it right by your peers' standards. It seems that the company you choose to keep in these things, and the company you choose to be, completely define the experience.

I often have the same feeling, like somehow I'm doing it wrong. I hear people go on an on about their guilds and their social connections to them and how they all love each and they're the reason why they still play...and I guess I was like that at one point?

I think after the 10th time of seeing my guilds break up from stupid drama that would never happen in real life, GM's stealing the guild bank and running, or people just plain vanishing because it's the internet and people do that, I just got jaded. I've turned into the, "People on the internet are just names, numbers and classes." person now too, and I'm a little disappointed in myself for becoming that guy, but it seems like its the only choice to stay sane on the internet.

So it's to the point where I just don't want to put in time and effort toward people on the internet, but I like MMO's and playing MMO's generally means you have to deal with other people, so....bleh. It's a bit of a dilemma and I can't help but feel like I'm just doin' it wrong.

Anyway, I'm pretty much in the same place. I want to play an MMO...but I can't go back to any level of hardcore raiding because of my lifestyle these days. I'll play the shit out of SWTOR, but not in any way to "Race to the Finish" right off the bat.

Throughout beta I've spent a lot of time just taking time to do things. I've wandered around aimlessly exploring (and not just for Datacrons), I've played the same class as different ACs to see what I really enjoy playing (not playing X class to fill Y roll in a raid group), messed around with crafting as much as possible. I enjoy the game. Is it SWG levels of "freedom/sandbox"? No, it's themepark based just like WoW. But (and I know I'm sounding like a fanboy) the story really does make it worth playing out until the end. And if you roll multiple characters, over 50% of the quests that you do in game are unique to your class...so you aren't completely bombarded with tedium when leveling a second character.

Rift was fun while it lasted. I wish I was more leadership-minded with the amount of time I played. But I know myself, better at helping out with small content. I am not a very organized person and subjecting raid to that would be cruel. LOL

I ran out of witty and clever names with WoW guilds. Went with the standard latin name out of complete unoriginality. My original idea was "I have a bad feeling about this" in latin (I male sentire de) but it doesn't sound right, so "Nothing to Despair" sounded better.

...Christ, I'd better have time. I have to play 40 hours a week through November just to stay current enough to be relevant in my job! A friend at Nintendo got me Skyward Sword four days early for a song (literally -- we made a deal in a karaoke bar), but luckily for me Chelsea's a way bigger Zelda wonk than I am, so she's tanking the Wii titles for now. Leaving me more time for

Jesus fucking SkyrimI'm level 40, Archery 100, Sneak 100, Alchemy 100. I can kill you in the mail, and I love this game.